Sage Rountree (sagerountree.com), PhD, is the preeminent authority in yoga for athletes, a yoga teacher and teacher trainer at the highest level (E-RYT 500), and an endurance sports coach with certifications from USA Triathlon, USA Cycling, and the Road Runners’ Club of America.
Sage offers 200- and 300-hour yoga teacher trainings, as well as continuing education and teacher development courses, both at her studios and online at Sage Yoga Teacher Training.
Sage is author of several books, most recently The Professional Yoga Teacher's Handbook (The Experiment, 2020). She is also author of The Athlete’s Guide to Yoga (VeloPress, 2008), The Athlete’s Pocket Guide to Yoga (VeloPress, 2009), The Athlete’s Guide to Recovery (VeloPress, 2011; also available in German, Spanish, and Japanese); The Runner’s Guide to Yoga (VeloPress, 2012), Racing Wisely (Sage Tree, 2013), and Everyday Yoga (VeloPress, 2015; also available in Spanish). With Alexandra DeSiato, she is coauthor of Lifelong Yoga (North Atlantic Books, 2017) and Teaching Yoga Beyond the Poses (North Atlantic Books, 2019). She has contributed chapters to USA Triathlon’s Complete Triathlon Guide (Human Kinetics, 2012) and USA Triathlon’s Women’s Guide to Triathlon (Human Kinetics, 2015).
Sage is the creator of The Athlete’s Guide to Yoga DVD (Endurance Films, 2008) and a founding partner of YogaVibes, where students around the world stream classes from a library of dozens of offerings from Sage. Her most recent video series is Core Strength for Real People.
Sage spent a decade as a regular contributor to Runner’s World, where she sat on the advisory board, and to Yoga Journal, where she wrote the Active Yogi blog for several years. Her writing also appears in Lava Magazine, USA Triathlon Magazine, Endurance Magazine, and at Ironman.com. Sage’s work has been cited by ESPN, The Atlantic, Vogue, Outside, Runner’s World, Inside Triathlon, Yoga Journal, Men’s Fitness, Men’s Journal, USA Today, U.S. News and World Report, the Chicago Tribune, and Martha Stewart Living Radio.
In addition to her writing, Sage is a dynamic speaker. She presents internationally on yoga, meditation, and athletics at venues including the U.S. Olympic Training Center, Yoga Journal LIVE!, the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, the Wanderlust Festival, the Running Summit, and USA Triathlon’s Art and Science of Triathlon conference. Covering topics from mindfulness and yoga to core strength, race planning, and recovery, Sage helps athletes and everyone find the right balance between work and rest for peak performance in sports and in life.
Co-owner of the three-studio Carolina Yoga Company, Sage directs its yoga teacher trainings, developing both new and experienced teachers. Her open classes draw athletes of all ages and levels. Sage regularly teaches yoga to several University of North Carolina coaches and teams, including football and men’s basketball. UNC basketball coach and Hall of Famer Roy Williams has been a private yoga student of Sage for over ten years and believes strongly in Sage’s teaching and in the power of yoga for athletes.
An accomplished endurance athlete, Sage has competed in running races from 400 meters to 40 miles, and triathlons from super sprint to Ironman. Her career highlight is requalifying for the Boston Marathon at Boston in 2008. Sage represented Team USA at the 2008 World Triathlon Championships and coaches endurance athletes of all levels. Her popular plans incorporating yoga in training for 5K, 10K, half marathon, and marathon races are available at the Athleta Chi blog (Sage was an Athleta Featured Athlete in 2009), and she has full featured plans available in the TrainingPeaks software. Sage’s 2014 Yoga Journal feature on training for a triathlon was developed into a successful twelve-week challenge for readers.
Sage holds a PhD in English literature. While in college and graduate school, she spent six years as a public radio announcer at WFDD and WUNC, which gave her the production skills to create the Sage Yoga Training podcast and to personally record and edit the audiobook edition of Racing Wisely. During and after finishing her graduate work, she worked for a dozen years in academic publishing, working for Duke, Cambridge, and Oxford University Presses. She lives in Carrboro, NC, with her husband and two daughters.
Find her at sagerountree.com.